Nominations flood in for Australia’s 50 most innovative manufacturers campaign

As readers of this website will know, nominations closed on Friday for @AuManufacturing’s very first Australia’s 50 most innovative manufacturers campaign. 

How was the response, you ask? Let us say that we are stunned. Shocked. Unable to stop smiling.

Being the first time we have run this campaign, we were of course unsure of what to expect. We’ll confess to being even a little nervous about responses matching up to what we hoped to deliver.

Australian manufacturers are overwhelmingly SMEs, and then overwhelmingly on the S side of that. They can generally be described as time-poor, perhaps even shy, and not in a hurry to put themselves forward. 

But put themselves forward they did! We received 75 nominations from manufacturers of all shapes and sizes. Pleasingly, many of them were on the smaller side.

We had entries ranging from very new venture-backed university spinouts to century-plus-old family-owned enterprises.

Companies developing everything from new materials for applications nobody’s thought of yet to new robotic solutions for defence. New ways to weld, to build houses, to store renewable energy, detect life-threatening illnesses, and to deliver vaccines.

Automotive. Medtech. Construction. Space. The list goes on. Even semiconductors! 

As we’ve said all along, innovation is for any company, regardless of how long they’ve been around, what they make or enable, and regardless of size. 

What a wonderful privilege to have so many of them come forward for this debut campaign. 

As expected, nominations trickled through in the early stages, and ramped up proportionate to how close it was to deadline. Let’s face it, the last minute is the best time to do any kind of paperwork.

By Friday afternoon there was a new notification every time we checked our email. We checked a lot. It got pretty exciting.

Seventy-five nominations. We are beyond delighted.

What a wonderful example of how vibrant @AuManufacturing’s community has become, with so many of the nation’s manufacturers choosing to be a part of our campaign. We are grateful that they have taken the time, and for the trust that we’ve earned from them over this title’s five years in existence so far.

Thank you to everybody who chose to take part, and we look forward to getting to know you better. We will be in touch shortly to invite you all to celebrate at the July 4 event concluding this fantastic campaign.

We will also be profiling as many applicants as we have time for in the lead-up to then.

Thanks again!

– Brent Balinski and Peter Roberts, co-founders and editors, @AuManufacturing

Australia’s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers is a new campaign by @AuManufacturing. It has been made possible by the generous support of  MYOB, SMC Corporation Australia, and Bosch Australia Manufacturing Solutions. Be sure to check back at this website for regular updates  including profiles of nominees and other information.